The United States and China Became Industrial Powers Thru Infrastructure: Railroads

Lawrence , , , , , , , , ,
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, 1861-1865. The greatest of all American Presidents

October 18, 2026

As you will read in the excerpted article below, President Abraham Lincoln and his network, which most importantly included economist Henry Carey, extended railroad development in the United States, which was responsible for its massive industrial growth. Most Americans, including our so called leaders, are downright ignorant of the actual history America. They have no truthful understanding of how the United States became an industrial power, before its self-imposed collapse beginning in the 1970s. If one were to examine the intensity of infrastructure projects in the United States that were initiated at the beginning of the 1800s, one would realize it was U.S. government directed infrastructure that formed our industrial national economy. This was in opposition to Adam Smith’s so-called free trade, free market, and supply and demand theories.

Immediately after the successful American Revolution, numerous large-scale infrastructure projects were launched including the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, the National Road, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and the Erie Canal. These projects aided by the federal government were an implementation of Alexander Hamilton’s fundamental scientific principles, which later became known as the American System of political Economy. President Lincoln, a follower of Alexander Hamilton, who was advised by Hamiltonian Henry Carey, continue this course of development in the second half of the nineteenth century. As you can see from the article and graphs below, it was President Lincoln’s  policies of dirigisme* that created America as an industrial power leading into the twentieth century.

China followed similar economic principles, which have completely transformed its economy during the brief period of the last two generations. This economic “miracle” was driven by the same dirigistic ideas of the American System. To wit: massive railroad construction, production of plentiful electricity, and building a robust manufacturing sector, including a steel industry. This concept was already known from its first President of the Republic of China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, in his plan to industrialize the nation. Similar to President Lincoln’s railroad expansion, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a follower of the American System, proposed that China’s industrialization would be driven by the construction of a density of railroad lines across China. (see graphic below)

*Dirigisme: an economic system where the state takes an active and directive role in guiding and shaping the economy towards national development goals, unlike laissez-faire economics..

The railway map of Sun Yat-sen appears in The International Development of China, originally published in English in 1920. It forms part of his “Industrial Plan” for national modernization in early Republican China. Courtesy of reddit.com

This is an edited transcript of the presentation that Richard Freeman gave to a July 5, 2026, at a Sare for President event in the Philadelphia area. Published in the October 16, 2026 issue of EIR magazine

Lincoln’s Economic Miracle, or the President Who Taught Shakespeare, Burns, and Poe to America

Excerpts follow.

By Richard Freeman

Abraham Lincoln, a student of Henry Carey and supporter of Henry Clay, both advocates of the American System, took over the American Presidency in March of 1861 in perhaps the harshest conditions any person before or since ever has.

Yet, he accomplished not only the defeat of the British-centered, -financed, and ‑directed Confederate slaveholders’ insurrection; preserved and expanded the Union; and began the decisive eradication of the barbaric Nazi-like institution of Black chattel slavery with his January 1, 1863, Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, but he also led an economic miracle.

Most Americans do not know that miracle exists or what it was. I hope you will get an idea of it by my selection of a few critical features to illustrate it. This presentation will emphasize that this miracle occurred, as all growth has occurred throughout history, as an economic shock wave, as described by Lyndon LaRouche.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Credit: Public Domain

This is a schlieren photograph of an airplane model with swept wings, at Mach 1.2 [Figure 1]. When an object, such as a jet plane, travels at a speed below the speed of sound, which is 760 miles per hour, there are certain physical laws that govern its behavior. When an object travels through the air faster than the speed of sound, the object outruns its own sound, and the pressure waves pile up into one massive, powerful, abrupt shock. From the ground, we hear this as a sonic boom. LaRouche says that the old laws no longer apply, that we enter a new domain. Think of this like a linked series of generated conical waves that pass over the back of the plane, with each conical wave representing an economic platform, having a higher set of scientific principles and power, and a higher power of reason, superseded by a new wave governed by even higher principles and power. This is what Lincoln’s economic miracle accomplished. I would add in support of Mr. LaRouche, that this series of successive breakthroughs was sustained, with interruptions, until the year 1900.

The American System

There are two features that accomplished this. One, the American System of Economics, which you have heard about this afternoon. In 1832, running as a candidate from Sangamon County for the Illinois House of Representatives, Lincoln stated:

My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system, and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles.

But as important as those principles are, this would not have worked without another quality of Lincoln: his poetical soul. Lincoln taught the writings and insights of William Shakespeare, Bobby Burns, and Edgar Poe to his Cabinet, to his generals, to the U.S. Congress, and to America.

Lincoln read, and could recite largely from memory, in particular, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hamlet, Richard III, King Lear, Henry VI, Henry VIII, Julius Caesar, and The Merchant of Venice. In the Spring of 1862, Lincoln visited the Union Army along the Potomac River. U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase were present. Union General Egbert Viele, who was part of the party, reported about Lincoln, “With a mind well stored with the grandest and most beautiful in English literature, and a memory so wonderful that he could repeat, almost word for word, whatever he read, he would sit for hours during the trip repeating the finest passages of Shakespeare’s best plays.” Lincoln loved and recited Bobby Burns’s republican poem, “A Man’s a Man for A’ That,” in a Gaelic accent. On long rides, he recited by heart to his company Edgar Poe’s “The Raven.”

Why is this important? The plays allowed him to think deeply about leadership, what is tyranny, and, with Lady Macbeth, what is blind, unreasoning ambition and evil. As the poet Percy Shelley said, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Lincoln had only twelve months of formal education; poetry was the only English language he knew. Lincoln lived in the realm of metaphor, the creative mind. He wrote poetically. He could perceive problems that his generals, like George McClellan, “Fighting Joe” Hooker, George Meade, and others couldn’t even see, and Lincoln solved them, directing the war.

Lincoln had a vision beyond that of his Cabinet and the Congress, and he led them to that vision. Poetry infused his soul and gave him his character. Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave and great American, who locked horns with Lincoln many times, including in his 1876 oration on Lincoln, said in an 1880 tribute to Lincoln, “A great man: Tender of heart, strong of nerve, of boundless patience and broadest sympathies, with no motive apart from his country. He could receive counsel from a child and give counsel to a sage. The simple approached him with ease…. Take him for all in all, Abraham Lincoln was one of the noblest, wisest, and best men I ever knew.”

The Greenback: A National Currency

With respect to the ordered shock waves, the U.S. Congress in 1862 passed a series of pieces of intermeshed legislation that, taken together as a unit, are among the most powerful ever passed. I call the 1862 Congress the Alexander Hamilton Congress.

First, look at Hamiltonian credit. In 1832, President Andrew Jackson treasonously dismantled the American System that had been erected by the previous President, John Quincy Adams. Four years before the Hamiltonian Second Bank of the United States was scheduled to be rechartered in 1836, Jackson destroyed the Bank by announcing he would refuse to recharter it and ordering the withdrawal of federal deposits from the Bank to leave it without any money to function. Jackson launched the era of wildcat banking: A person with almost no credit could set up a bank, provided he bought some state bonds and could convince a state banking representative to allow him to operate. The banks were state-chartered. By 1861, when Lincoln took office, there were 1,400 state-chartered wildcat banks; there were about 7,500 different currencies, each issued by a state bank. Many currencies were counterfeit or worthless.

Lincoln and the Republican Party, which controlled the Congress once the seceding Confederate states had walked out, proposed two large bond issues to fund the costly war. The first was called the 5-20 bond, a 20-year bond paying 6% interest, first issued in February 1862 but continued throughout the war, raising between 500 and 600 million dollars. Pro-American Philadelphia-based investment banker Jay Cooke had 2,500 sub-agents to sell the bonds directly to the American citizenry. This produced an amazing response by the American people. The government also issued three-year U.S. government bonds paying 7.3%, issued in the amount of $830 million. These, too, were sold by the Cooke system.

The U.S. government also used a progressive income tax, an excise tax, and tariffs to raise money.

As a result of the continued wildcat banking, the U.S. still did not have a sovereign currency. In February 1862, explicitly pro-Alexander Hamilton banker Elbridge Gerry Spaulding, a congressman from Buffalo, New York, introduced what became the Legal Tender Act. This introduced a U.S. currency that paid no interest and thus was a non-interest-bearing loan to the United States government. It was not convertible into gold. The first Act issued $150 million, and two subsequent legislative acts issued another $300 million for a total of $450 million in only 14 months. This currency was issued to soldiers and war materiel providers as pay, but then could circulate among merchants, businessmen and farmers. The $450 million in legal tender notes, called greenbacks because the backside of the note was green, tripled the U.S. currency supply in only 14 months, expanding productive economic activity greatly. Lyndon LaRouche strongly favored this, because the currency was issued and controlled by the United States government [as stipulated in the Constitution—ed.], not a private bank.  It restored sovereignty to the U.S. dollar.

There were other measures to force the closure of wildcat banks, in the 1864 and 1865 banking acts, which will be covered elsewhere.

The Transcontinental Railway

The second superlative measure from the 1862 Hamiltonian Congress was the Pacific Railway—to build the first transcontinental railway, which would connect the nation and set in motion several self-organized shock waves.

Lincoln was personally involved in the process. On August 13, 1859, he met the exceptional railroad engineer Grenville Dodge for two hours in Council Bluffs, Iowa, where, as Dodge said in his Recollections, Lincoln got all the best information from Dodge on the best route for a transcontinental railroad, which Dodge had already surveyed. Three years later, on July 1, 1862, Lincoln, as President, signed the Pacific Railway Act into law.

As the middle part of the map shows [Figure 2], there would be two railway companies: The first company, the Central Pacific, started in San Francisco–Sacramento, California, laying track and heading eastward; the second company, the Union Pacific, started in Council Bluffs, Iowa (near Omaha, Nebraska)—where Lincoln had met Dodge—laying track heading westward. The project started in 1863, and between 20,000 and 25,000 men worked on the arduous, and often engineering-challenging project. The track of the two railway companies met six years later at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869, and the rail lines were joined, forming a 1,912-mile (3,077 km) rail line that was a marvel.

Figure 2
Figure 2. Credit: EIRNS

Consider a few of the explosive effects.

First, before the Pacific Railroad construction, a trip from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Sacramento or San Francisco of a young man in good condition, with horses and supplies, took approximately 90 to 150 days, depending on the variables. The very first passenger train on the new transcontinental Pacific line took 4.25 days, a savings of time of 95 to 97%. Put another way, in terms of saving time, the railroad represented a growth in physical productivity of man’s transportation, of 3,500% at its uppermost level, which changes the space-time relationship between man and nature.

Second, counting the existing connecting railways from the East Coast to Council Bluffs, Iowa, the United States was now connected from coast to coast, realizing John Quincy Adams’s positive conception of continental expansion.

Third, now manufacturing and agricultural goods, including coal, metals, wheat, and corn, could cross the nation. In 1878, engineer Gustavus Swift and inventor Andrew Chase developed the first truly practical and widely used ice-cooled railcar. By the 1880s, the nation could transport fruits, vegetables, and cut-up meats in ice-cooled, insulated cars from California to Florida to Maine.

Fourth, as the map shows [Figure 2], there were five transcontinental railways, not one, covering the different latitudes of the United States, and there grew up connecting routes going north and south. The Northern Pacific, which is the northernmost one, and the Southern Pacific, which is the southernmost one, were both initiated by Lincoln. In total, he signed three of these [routes] into law.

Fifth, railroads are more than train routes; they form development corridors. Under railroad land grant acts, the U.S. government gave to the railroads strips of federal land extending outward 10 to 40 miles from both sides of the track, creating corridors up to 80 miles wide. The railroads, to gain operating capital and pay off their loans, sold this land to citizens, who bought it so that they could be near the railroad. The citizens built farms, communities, cities, schools, and new production facilities. The cities of Omaha, Nebraska; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Denver, Colorado; and Chicago, Illinois, all blossomed as a result of being in a railroad development corridor. This is city building, civilization building.

Figure 3.
Figure 3. Credit: EIRNS / Source: American Railway Association

Sixth, look at [Figure 3]. The level of Class I railroad mileage in the United States rose from 30,000 miles in 1860 to 193,000 miles in 1900. That is a compounded annual growth rate of 13.4% for 40 years. If an economy grows by, say, 5 percent, for 7 or 8 years, that’s pretty good. Railroad track miles grew by a compounded 13.4% year after year for 40 straight years.

The U.S. government played the absolutely decisive dirigistic role in providing state-directed credit for the railroad building. While the private railroad companies raised funds, the U.S. government floated $64 million in bonds, a huge sum in those days, and then lent the bond money to the railroad companies to build the railways. They were thirty-year loans. The government also gave the railroads 130 million acres of U.S. land—that’s about 20,000 square miles—as a right of way for the railroad, and for the railroads to sell so that they could also have cash to pay their bills.

Figure 4.
Figure 4. Credit: EIRNS / Source: American Iron and Steel Institute

The railroads are the backbone of a shock-wave explosion, improving the productivity of every square mile of the United States, and of every citizen.

The railroads, as a science-driver, gave the impetus for the development of steel, and it was critical for building steel railroad tracks, steel bridges, and, by the 1890s, steel locomotives to handle far heavier loads and travel at higher speeds. Other elements of the U.S. economy also required greater volumes of steel. After U.S. engineer Alexander Lyman-Holley made critical technological improvements in the Bessemer steel process for the United States, steel production [Figure 4] grew by leaps and bounds, from 17 thousand tons produced in 1860, to 10 million tons in 1900 (and eventually to 141 million tons by 1969). In the last 40 years of the 19th Century, under the Lincoln economic miracle, the growth in steel-making capacity was 17.8% per year.

The steel spinoff helped produce another spinoff. Steel dramatically helped with the reaper and the harvester, which worked much better with steel than with using the more brittle iron. Comparing 1890, with the use of a steel reaper, to 1830, before there was a reaper, a single farmer could harvest seven times more bushels of wheat. Steel made farm implements more productive, farm implements made the economy more productive—an advance in one field led to an advance in another field. In 1860, the U.S. had 140,000 manufacturing factories, which tripled to 513,000 in 1900—which, by the way, is 100,000 more than we have today.       

When the original work of André-Marie Ampère and Wilhelm Weber on the development of the science of electricity and electromagnetism resulted in the development of commercially deliverable electricity in the 1880s by Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, another wave of the shock front took over. Lincoln did not invent electricity, but he did have a lot to do with the building of the railroads, as a foundation, and creating the directed environment of one invention leading to the creation of another.

LaRouche noted that the Lincoln economic miracle was exported as a model to the Meiji Restoration in Japan, to Otto von Bismarck in Germany, and to Dmitri Mendeleyev in Russia.

One cannot complete discussion of Lincoln without noting that the Emancipation Proclamation he issued on January 1, 1863, was deliberately understated but had a shocking effect. It stated:

Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States … by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid … do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

This ending of slavery and the economic miracle–shock wave, LaRouche stated, made the United States the most powerful industrial economy on Earth, and restored its moral power in fulfilling the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Today, we need to deliberately create a self-developing economic shock wave, and to elicit the poetical soul of Abraham Lincoln.

Read below earlier articles on this topic:

China’s Xinhua Publishes Freeman: “Create a New Paradigm For economic Progress”

U.S. Pursues Alexander Hamilton To Achieve Economic Hegemony vs China: Can It Succeed?

China Is Committed to the ‘Hamiltonian’ Development of Africa: The U.S. Led West, Is Not

China’s Spokesperson Identifies Physical Economy: “It’s about making people’s lives better”

­͏Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica 

Presidents Xi-Trump Summit Can Potentially Transform the Planet

Lawrence , , , , , , ,
Watch my discussion on the Winers from October 1. I provide a unique analysis of the Xi-Trump Summit and the challenges facing U. S. leadership in the world.

October 12, 2026

Presidents Xi-Trump Summit Can Potentially Transform the Planet

The summit at the end of September in the capital of the United States, between Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump was the most important event taking place on the planet. More important than the speeches at the United Nations. The specifics of what of “deliverables,” was overshadowed by the public display of respect that both presidents conveyed for each other, which the entire world witnessed. This creates a potential for change in the world. I say potential, because we do not know if, and by what means how these two leaders may collaborate in the future. However, we can be optimistic that based on their mutual behavior, some good will result.

Collaborating with China on such great  missions as; ending poverty in all nations, the realization of fusion energy, and the colonization of the Moon, would be transformative for the planet. There are many of President Trump’s policies for the United Sates, for Africa, for the Middle East, and for other regions, which I strongly disagree with. However, his respectful relationship with the president of China, the second largest economy in the world, is invaluable, contrary to the views of many anti-China war hawks in both parties.

Most Americans have no understanding of China. Over the last several years I have learned a great deal about this fascinating nation, having visited Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin, Shangdu, and Xi’an. China’s culture is a vibrant mixture of an ancient civilization and a technologically advanced modern industrialized nation. China’s leadership is dedicated to development and improving the lives of its people. I suspect they recognize what I know, that the world has already entered a new dimension with the declining dominance of rules-based order, and the emergence of the Global South.

Let the presidents of China and the United States make an enduring contribution to the future of civilization as a realization of their friendship.

Read below my earlier posts on this topic:

China’s Spokesperson Identifies Physical Economy: “It’s about making people’s lives better”

Will China’s Global Governance Initiative Replace The West’s Failed “Rules Based Order?”

­͏Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica 

China’s Xinhua Publishes Freeman: “Create a New Paradigm For economic Progress”

Lawrence , , , , , , ,

Interview: China’s exemplary development practices prove SDGs are attainable, says U.S. expert

October 9, 2026

by Xinhua writer Liu Yanan

NEW YORK, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) — China’s practices in economic growth and poverty elimination are exemplary and have proven that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are attainable, as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) helps achieve the goals, said an American expert.

China’s economic success over the past two generations has offered valuable examples for other countries, said Lawrence Freeman, a U.S. political-economic analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over three decades.

The world faces enormous challenges in reaching the SDGs by 2030 with approximately 800 million people living in extreme poverty worldwide, Freeman said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

In Africa alone, approximately 440 million people live in extreme poverty, slightly less than one third of its population, while poverty continues to increase, said Freeman.

“However, the good news is that China, over the course of two generations, has completely transformed its economy, eliminated extreme rural poverty and leads the world in infrastructure-led physical economic growth. China has proven that it can be done,” he said.

China, with its unwavering commitment to the development of the nation, and its mastery of effective economic governance, has proven to the world that the SDGs can be achieved, he noted.

The Global Development Initiative proposed by China in September 2021 articulates the most important essential concept of development to be understood by all nations, and the BRI and the growth of the BRICS have provided vital input and made on-the-ground contributions to achieving the SDGs, Freeman said.

China’s key role in the Global South has been invaluable in driving the world forward in economic progress, he said. “We must recognize that the future of the planet lies in the development of the Global South.”

The BRI has attracted needed investments in infrastructure throughout the developing sector, which the West has refused to offer, said Freeman.

In Africa, the BRI has been a primary contributor to the construction of hard infrastructure projects, particularly in the generation of electricity, railroads, ports and airports, he said.

Moreover, Freeman called for the creation of a new paradigm devoted to achieving economic progress in every country.

As part of the efforts, he proposed to eastablish a new international credit institution to provide sufficiently long-term, low-interest credit for investments in infrastructure.

The latest UN data show that only 36 percent of the SDG targets with available trend data are on track or making moderate progress, while 15 percent have regressed.

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted in 2015, with 17 SDGs at its heart. ■

Read in Chinese: Development is an eternal theme for human society

Read below my earlier posts on this topic:

China & Freeman Agree With The African Charter: “Economic Development is a Human Right”

China’s Amb: “We follow the path of peaceful development”

­͏Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica 

U.S. Pursues Alexander Hamilton To Achieve Economic Hegemony vs China: Can It Succeed?

Lawrence , , , , , , , , ,

September 25, 2026,

It is beyond doubt that the world is facing an existential crisis, which in large part is driven by the collapse of the United States; politically, economically, and culturally. The United States as the world’s hegemon is no more. This is not necessarily fatal for humanity, if we use this opportunity to create a new set of political economic relations throughout the world. In brief; We need a new paradigm. The current global system, which has been controlled in large measures over the last four-score years, by the fatal diseased ideology of a zero-sum thinking by the West, must be transcended.

Given that the collapse of the United States is empirically obvious, elements of the U.S. Establishment have begun to desperately look for other methods in an attempt to maintain the United States as the world’s superpower. This is the only way to comprehend the recently published article, How to Reindustrialize America: The Case for a Strategic Investment Fund, by Jake Sullivan, in the July 29, 2026, issue of Foreign Affairs. To understand the significance of Sullivan’s  commentary, it is important to know that he served as the National Security advisor to President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2025, occupying a top policy post in the government. Foreign Affairs magazine is published by the Council of Foreign Relations, the premier think tank in the United States, representing the Anglo-American establishment, which is influential in all the affairs of government regardless of party. (1)

China “The Enemy” As The Motivator

Sullivan’s article is an attempt to persuade the American Establishment  that the United States must reindustrialize to combat China, prevent it from surpassing the United States to become the new hegemon. Regrettably, America is responsible for outsourcing our industrial economy, not China. It has brought this calamity upon itself through wrongheaded policies. Sullivan, along with all elected and appointed government officials in Washington DC, blame China for using its expanding manufacturing capacity for the reduction of our country’s manufacturing sector. This is completely false. America did this to itself when the same Foreign Affairs recommended in the 1980s that the United States become a “postindustrial society,” a service economy and financial capital of the world, which would  not require industry. As a result, we have experienced the reduction of over five million manufacturing jobs in this century, which has not abated under President Trump. Read: Xinhua Publishes Freeman’s Critique of the Post World War II “Rules Based Order”

Jake Sullivan (courtesy of South China Morning Post)

From the opening paragraphs, Sullivan makes clear that is purpose for reindustrializing the United States is not for the betterment of American citizens, but to prevent China from becoming the premier global power.

Sullivan writes in his second paragraph:

The result [of China’s policy] is a market systematically tilted by state intervention… China’s strategy has created a technology ecosystem that now rivals–and in some areas surpasses–that of the United States…For China, industrial capacity has become a tool of coercion as well as competitiveness…  

At the same time China was building its industrial strength, the United States was allowing much of its productive base to migrate abroad. For a few decades, that shift appeared to carry few strategic costs. America remained the world’s leading center of research and intervention even as manufacturing employment fell and supply chains stretched across. But the cost of separating innovation from production are now too great to ignore. As factories have moved offshore, the United States has lost much of its skilled workforce and the expertise to build at speed and scale. If it does not change course, the country could cede its technological edge, and, in time, its broader global leadership, to China. (emphasis added)

GDP Share Trend: Dropped steadily from ~15-16% in the late 1990s/2000 down to 9.4 to 9.5 of total U.S. GDP by the end of 2025

He continues in his essay:  

The course of American manufacturing illustrates its dynamic. Once production ecosystems fragment, they’re exceedingly hard to rebuild. U.S. shipbuilding, for example, collapsed after the 1980s, when the government subsidies were withdrawn erasing supplier depth and design expertise. From the 1980s onward, the offshoring of U.S. transformer or machine tool manufacturing reduced procurement costs for downstream firms in the short term but wiped out the domestic base of engineers and component makers.

These were the effects caused by the fraud of globalization that went hand in hand with the Establishment’s dictated, post-industrial society, which accelerated the decline of America’s vital productive industries.

According to the rules based order, with their zero sum mindset, which contaminates Sullivan’s outlook, the United States must reindustrialize, not for the good of our country, but to stop China. This, glaring ideological defect, will lead to greater conflict throughout the world, if it is not superseded with a superior worldview. In other words, we need to establish a new set of beliefs, values, and policies, which coheres with the need to develop our nation and the rest of the world in accordance.

U.S. manufacturing contributed approximately $2.89 trillion, or roughly 9.4 t0 9.5%, of total U.S. GDP by the end of 2025. [1, 2, 📉 Key Trends

Enter Alexander Hamilton

The scientific economic principles of Alexander Hamilton, which became the foundation for the school of economic thought known as the American System of Political Economy, will always work if they are properly comprehended and correctly applied. This has been the case throughout the history of the United States and the world when leaders adhered to Hamilton’s economic philosophy. (2)

Briefly, the American System rejects the Adam Smith free trade- let the marketplace decide- notion of economics and instead insists that  the state acting for the public good, participates in fostering economic growth. The elementary tenets of Hamilton’s system that saved our debt ridden, agrarian based, young republic and created a once mighty industrial powerhouse, are:

1) The use of national banking in all of its forms following Article 10, section 8 of the Constitution.

2) The emission of productive credit as a tool for growing the economy.

3) The use of protective tariffs and bounties (subsidies) where needed to grow desired high technological manufacturing/scientific sectors.

4) the harmonization of public and private capital for the accomplishment of national works.

5) Large scale, long term infrastructure projects which uplift the standards of living of all people, increase society’s productive powers of labor, and enhance the cognitive powers of the population. (3)

Hamilton’s brilliant report on the need for the U.S. to develop manufacturing.

Sullivan Turns To Hamilton

Realizing that the United States has fallen significantly behind China in basic manufacturing and industrial production, Sullivan recognizes the need to reach for the sound economic policies of Alexander Hamilton, as he interprets them. He writes accurately:

Whenever the United States has faced existential tests, its leaders have turned to Hamilton’s logic.

Since its founding, the United States has treated finance as an instrument of sovereignty. In his nineteen 1791 Report on Manufacturers to the Congress, Hamilton made the case that economic independence was inseparable from the political independence. The young republic, he argued, had to use public credit to nurture productive industry and national strength. Hamilton envisioned a pragmatic model of state-enabled  capitalism, in which loans “bounties” encouraged “infant manufacturers,” tariffs protected their strategic sectors, and public institutions channeled capital towards long-term national aims. Whenever the United States has faced existential tests, its leaders have returned to Hamiltonian logic. (emphasis added) Read: Nations Must Study Alexander Hamilton’s Principles of Political Economy

President Franklin Roosevelt initiates programs to rebuild America’s economy

Sullivan correctly identifies President Franklin Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), as a Hamiltonian credit facility to counter the economic hardships of the Great Depression during  the 1930s. The RFC also successfully built America’s military capability-the arsenal of democracy- that defeated the German Third Reich and Japan’s imperial army in World War II.

Sullivan writes:

When credit markets froze during the Great Depression and World War II, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) created 1932, filled the gap and served as a strategic investor, financing banks, utilities, housing, and manufacturing, earning returns and restoring confidence in U.S. markets.

A Hamiltonian Proposal?

The RFC model used responsible public investment…showed that effectively deployed public capital can be used to invest in important industries private capital either unwilling or unable to finance by itself. (emphasis added)

Similar to President Roosevelt’s RFC, Sullivan proposes the creation a $50 billion U.S. Strategic Investment Fund (SIF) to attract private sector financing in an attempt to reverse the declining industrial base of the United States. He explains:

Throughout its history, the United States built institutions that channeled capital toward a national strategy. Resurrecting that tradition today would mean establishing a new kind of public investor: a U.S. strategic investment fund (SIF), a federally chartered market-facing public investor with its own balance sheet, designed to invest alongside private capital in strategically critical industries, both mature and emerging, where markets alone have proven insufficient…For more than two centuries, the United States has shaped its financial institutions to meet the strategic demands of the era. Hamilton’s treasury built national credit in the young republic. The RFC built industrial scale during the nation’s economic nadir… Each moment required the same act of imagination: treating capital as a tool of national purpose and industrial power.

Three great American Presidents who applied Hamilton’s economic principles to industrialize the United States

Aspirations For Hamilton Today

Alexander Hamilton, our nation’s first Treasury Secretary, was a crucial contributor to the creation of the United States. The application of his scientific economic principles resulted in the industrial expansion of America. Hamilton’s four economic reports, written from 1789 to 1791, adopted by President George Washington, formed the true economic foundation of the United States, not Adam Smith. (4)  His utilization of public productive credit and directed government issued capital were essential mechanisms to create America’s prosperous economy from a confederation of thirteen bankrupt colonies. Hamilton adopted the approach of dirigisme,* rejecting so called laissez-faire capitalism. Throughout American and European history, nations have turned to Hamilton’s economic policies in times of crisis, when their countries needed industrial expansion or revitalization. There is clear identifiable evidence that China’s rapid economic growth over a relatively brief period of time, used similar economic modalities as those of Alexander Hamilton. China typifies a dirigistic approach to national economy. Read: U.S. Establishment Admits Truth Of China’s Economic Superiority, But They Don’t Understand It

This essay by Jake Sullivan, following several articles in recent issues of  Foreign Affairs, that reporton the United States falling behind China in industrial output, indicate awareness by some elements in the U.S. Establishment, that the United States is in serious decline, and are looking for a means to reverse it. Within the last hundred years, we have the examples of Presidents Franklim Roosevelt and John Kennedy, applying Hamiltonian policies to achieve their goals for our nation.

Economic development requires at a minimum; quality infrastructure, a robust manufacturing sector, a modern agricultural sector, a well-funded scientific vision, promotion of new technologies, quality education, and modern healthcare. Economic development is a good for humanity; it is a good in and for itself. The impetus for economic development need not require being provoked by an enemy image. A true reindustrialization of the United States could not be done in isolation. It would demand development for the rest of the world to be successful. The most moral and efficient path to reindustrialization of the United States would be to encourage all nations to emulate the American System while maintaining their complete sovereignty over their national economy. A community of sovereign nations cooperating in the pursuit of economic growth, the elimination of poverty and hunger, would remove the foremost causes for wars among nations. This presents an existential challenge for the leadership of the United States. The controlling ideology of the rules-based order with its dangerous zero-sum mindset is not congruent with Hamiltonian principles; in fact, it is antithetical to them. America would be incapable of achieving Sullivan’s objectives while upholding its ideological conviction that it must reign as the super-hegemon of the world.

*dirigisme: an economic system where the state takes an active and directive role in guiding and shaping the market economy towards national development goals, unlike laissez-faire economics.

1-The Council on Foreign Relations is a 100 year old arm of the Anglo-American establishment. Founded in 1921 as the American branch of the British Royal Institute for International Affairs, otherwise known as Chatham House, which was created two years earlier. Chatham House was created by Lord Alfred Milner, then acting as Secretary of State for the British Empire’s colonies, through a vast trust funded by the estate of race-patriot Cecil Rhodes.

2-Hamilton versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics , Nancy Bradeen Spannaus, Americansystyemnow.com

3-Alexander Hamilton: Crash Course in Statecraft and the Rise of the American System, Mathew Ehret, matthewehret@substack.com

4- The Vision of Alexander Hamilton: Four Economic Reports by Alexander Hamilton

1-The Council on Foreign Relations is a 100 year old arm of the Anglo-American establishment. Founded in 1921 as the American branch of the British Royal Institute for International Affairs, otherwise known as Chatham House, which was created two years earlier. Chatham House was created by Lord Alfred Milner, then acting as Secretary of State for the British Empire’s colonies, through a vast trust funded by the estate of race-patriot Cecil Rhodes.

2-Hamilton versus Wall Street: The Core Principles of the American System of Economics , Nancy Bradeen Spannaus, Americansystyemnow.com

3-Alexander Hamilton: Crash Course in Statecraft and the Rise of the American System, Mathew Ehret, matthewehret@substack.com

4- The Vision of Alexander Hamilton: Four Economic Reports by Alexander Hamilton

Read:Sullivan: How to Reindustrialize America

Read my earlier articles on this topic:

Can U.S. Compete With China? Washington Establishment Has Serious Qualms

 Tariffs Do Not Create Economic Wealth: Trump Is Wrong!

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

China Is Committed to the ‘Hamiltonian’ Development of Africa: The U.S. Led West, Is Not

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Please watch the video above. It is is a unique discussion on Alexander’s Hamilton’s contributions to economic progress through examining the policies of China, Africa, and the U.S.

September 3, 2026

China believes it is better to contribute to the development of African nations, to not have their populations suffer in poverty, but rather experience a continuous rising standard of living. The West does not!

Contrary to constant maligning of China by the West, accusing it of  conducting a new form of colonialism against the people of Africa, China has been an indispensable partner for development. There is not and never has been a “debt-trap “ policy to seize mineral resources of African nations. Any American official repeating this defamation is either an ignorant fool or a liar. The West dominated the African continent for decades, while China has only recently in this century, expanded its involvement with the nations of Africa. The creation by China, of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in 2003, has established a unique political, economic cooperative relationship with African nations.

As Alexander Hamilton understood, and his followers of his school of economic thought, which became known as the American System of Political Economy knew, the key to the growth of a nation, and its economy, is to increase the productive powers of labor. This requires a growth in manufacturing, it requires massive investments in infrastructure, and it requires nurturing the creativity of the population to discover new scientific principles, from which new technologies are derived. With the application of new technological advancements, the economy is able to leap, if you will, to a higher level of productivity, generating  greater economic output.

This is what should be understood by Western officials. There are people in China who think this way. Presently,  we don’t have people in the West, and the United States in particular, who refuse to comprehend these essential elements of economic growth. The Western political-financial elites are mired in a monetarist world dominated by making money, which they foolishly believe is wealth.  They lack any understanding of what the requirements are to actually develop an economy physically, nor the necessity to promote a culture that fosters the creative potential of its people. They don’t understand the difference between making a so called profit from monetary speculation, the stock market, or manipulating the market, as opposed to increasing the profitability of the physical economy. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is attacked by the United States and the West, who fail to comprehend that the BRI is a modern day extension of Hamilton’s economic principles.

China has proved, beyond any question, that their investments in science and technology, infrastructure, and manufacturing in particular, have transformed their economy, their society. With the proven reality of this success, China can lead the Global South on a pathway of real economic development

The African continent is projected to have the largest population in the world-approximately 2.5 billion people by 2050. That’s not a burden. It is a resource of new creative minds, which are the real source of value for any economy, more valuable than minerals or artificial intelligence.

I believe watching this video will help you understand these principles that I have outlined above.

Read below, my earlier posts on this topic:

Nations Must Study Alexander Hamilton’s Principles of Political Economy

Hamilton versus Wall Street: Relevance to Ethiopia & Africa

A Hamiltonian Development Policy for Africa Is A Necessity

Alexander Hamilton Created the U.S. African Nations Can Embrace His Economic Principles

Celebrate July 4th Time to Adopt Hamilton’s Industrialization Polices for Africa

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

China’s Spokesperson Identifies Physical Economy: “It’s about making people’s lives better”

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Examine the exponential growth of electricity in China in a mere forty years.

August 28, 2026

The true measurement of an economy is not money, not macro statistics, not stock market indexes: it is the improvement in the material standard of living of the population. Liu Chang, Spokesperson for the China Embassy, speaking on July 31, described the elementary metric of economic development: It’s about making people’s lives better.

China, in 2000 had zero high-speed rail trains, in 2025 it has 50,000 kilometers of rail, more than the rest of the world combined.

As the Chinese understand very well, a key factor in improving the standard of living of its population, requires massive infrastructure investments. The Chinese government are unsurpassed, among all nations of the world, in expanding vital categories of infrastructure that are indispensable to increasing the productivity of their entire economy. As African nations have experienced, without infrastructure, especially electricity and rail, real economic growth will be thwarted, if not impossible. Examine the two graphs above. These images are startling. However, they should not be shocking. For the last two generations China has concentrated on industrializing its economy, becoming  the leading nation in manufacturing, ship building and the refinement of critical minerals. This has resulted in lifting 700 million of its people from abject poverty and improving the standard of living for all members of its society. China is committed to assisting the Global South, which encompasses the majority of the world’s population, land mass, and minerals. As the U.S. led Western alliance of nations thrash about in their collapsing rules-based order, China and the Global South can create a new system, a new paradigm of political-economic relationships premised on a common share future of economic development for mankind.

The presentation below is reprinted from the August 21, 2026 issue of Executive Intelligence Review magazine,

From a Grain of Rice to a World of Greater Equality—China and the Global South: A Story of Shared Development

Liu Chang, Spokesperson for China Embassy

by Liu Chang, July 31, 2026

Ladies and Gentlemen, first of all, I want to say thank you to the Schiller Institute for inviting me. It’s my real pleasure to join you today. Today’s topic is “A Dialogue of Civilizations: Development or World War III,” so I will emphasize the part of development, and share some thoughts of how China sees global development. My title is “China and the Global South: A Story of Shared Development.”

When it comes to development, people tend to think of GDP, investment, or massive infrastructure projects. But for most families, development looks much simpler. It means having lights during the night; roads remaining open through the rainy season; a doctor available when someone falls ill; a young person learning skills that lead to a decent job. These may sound like ordinary things, but that’s exactly what development is about. It’s not about making the numbers look better; it’s about making people’s lives better. Development matters when a family can feel the difference, and when an entire community can share in its benefits.

Not long ago, I read a story about farmers in Madagascar planting hybrid rice developed in China. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, these varieties can produce between 9 and 11 tons of rice per hectare, compared with about 2.8 tons for traditional local varieties. Those figures are more than statistics. To a local farmer, they could mean something more tangible; fuller granaries, a little more income, and a better chance of keeping a child in school.

So, what can a single grain of rice tell us? It reminds us that development cooperation is only meaningful if it improves ordinary lives. And in today’s inter-connected world, it raises four larger questions: How do we make development more inclusive? How do we protect it with lasting peace? How do we enable different civilizations to learn from one another? And how do we build a fairer system of global governance? These are exactly the questions that China has been seeking to answer.

China’s Four Global initiatives

First, how can the fruits of development benefit more people? China proposed the Global Development Initiative in 2021. Under the initiative, more than $23 billion have been mobilized and over 1,800 cooperation projects launched. But numbers alone do not tell the whole story. The more important question is whether these efforts can change people’s lives for the better. In Madagascar, as I mentioned earlier, change means higher yields from the hybrid rice. In Papua New Guinea, change could be a stand of Juncao grass allowing small farmers to grow edible mushrooms without cutting down forests, while creating new sources of income. Or it could be a Luban workshop in Kazakhstan, where local students learn practical skills in areas such as renewable energy, automation, and rail transportation based on the needs of local industries.

What China seeks is not simply to deliver a project and move on. It is to work with local partners to develop skills, share appropriate technologies, and create opportunities that can take root, continue to grow, and benefit local communities over the long term.

Rice is flourishing in Madagascar, the island nation which now has Africa’s largest area cultivating high-yield, hybrid rice. In 2007, China launched the hybrid rice demonstration center project in Madagascar, one of 10 such ag-tech specialty centers across the continent.FAO/Mijoro

 Rice is flourishing in Madagascar, the island nation which now has Africa’s largest area cultivating high-yield, hybrid rice. In 2007, China launched the hybrid rice demonstration center project in Madagascar, one of 10 such ag-tech specialty centers across the continent.

Second, what protects the gains of development? For many developing countries, security means far more than the absence of war. It also means hospitals can continue to operate during floods, droughts, or public health crises. It means stable access to food and energy. It means having the resilience to emerge from challenges. A war can destroy a school overnight. A severe natural disaster or public health emergency can set back the development of an entire community for years.

This is why China proposed the Global Security Initiative in 2022. It calls for a vision of security that is common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable. It emphasizes resolving differences through dialogue and consultation, while also addressing global challenges such as food security, energy security, public health, and climate change. Peace is the foundation on which development grows. And development itself can help address the root causes of conflict and instability, creating stronger foundations for lasting peace.

Third, can different paths of development respect and enrich one another? China’s answer is yes. Every country has its own history, culture, and path of development. Cooperation should not begin with the assumption that one country must first become a copy of another. True civilizational exchange is not about one side changing the other, nor replacing the other. It is about learning from each other with equality and respect, drawing inspiration from different experiences, and allowing diverse civilizations to grow together through dialogue rather than compete through exclusion.

In 2023, China proposed the Global Civilization Initiative, which recognizes that the greatest value of mutual learning between civilizations is not to erase differences, but to make those differences a starting point for mutual understanding and mutual reinforcement.

Last but not the least, who should shape global rules, and whom should those rules serve? Today, the contribution of the Global South to global development continues to grow. Yet in some international institutions, its representation and voice remain limited.

In 2025, China proposed the Global Governance Initiative, which emphasizes sovereign equality, the rule of international law, multilateralism, a people-centered approach, and action-oriented cooperation. The goal is not to tear down the existing international system or start over from scratch. Rather, it is to make that system more representative, more effective, and better able to respond to the concerns of developing countries. Global rules should be shaped through the participation of more countries, not written by a few and simply accepted by the rest. The affairs of the world should be discussed and decided together. And the benefits of development should be shared by all.

These four Global Initiatives reflect China’s vision for the future of our world: development gives people hope; security protects that hope; civilizations help us understand one another; and governance provides fairer institutions for shared progress.

From Poverty to Development

China has always been a member of the Global South. We have experienced the long journey from poverty to development, and we understand that there is no single model for modernization, nor any shortcut that can simply be copied and pasted. China is willing to share its experience, but not turn that experience into a prescription for others. We are willing to provide support, but not make decisions on behalf of our partners. We are willing to build bridges, roads, and hospitals, but we also want to work with countries around the world to develop the talent that allows people to shape their own future.

China looks forward to continuing to work with countries around the world so that development is no longer the privilege of a few, but a right shared by all; so that modernization is not painted in a single color, but reflects a landscape of diverse paths and possibilities; and so that every country and every people can take part in shaping our shared future.

Thank you very much.

Read below my earlier post on this topic.

Will China’s Global Governance Initiative Replace The West’s Failed “Rules Based Order?

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

U.S. Needs Strategic Thinkers to Understand China & Africa, Not Mindless Babbling Politicians

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View my discussion in the video above from July 30, with Grace Asagra on her podcast, Quantum Nurse.

August 20, 2026

Please view my video interview above, which is my first discussion since my three-week visit to several cities in China during June and July. I encourage all citizens, especially of the United States to visit China and see for yourself this interesting, shall I say fascinating society, with its rich  culture and history, and its engaging people. This is the best way to protect your mind from being brainwashed by the anti-China propaganda spewed forth by U.S. media and our silly and ignorant politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties.

The reporting of China by the West, in particular the U.S., completely mischaracterizes this dynamic society with its mixture of former dynasties and ultra-modern cities that have emerged in China over recent decades. Most of what the U.S. establishment reports about China he is unfortunately contaminated with the zero-sum mentality of their rules-based international order. China has a different perspective for the world world, which is based on the idea of creating a common future for mankind.

Their development has been phenomenal over the last forty plus years since the opening up of China. China has become the leading nation in manufacturing, in high speed rail construction, in robotics, in nuclear fission energy production, in ship building, and in mining of critical and rare earth minerals. As well, a leading nation in space exploration, fusion research, and chip technology. In 2013, China reached out to the rest of the world with the Belt and Road initiative, which has eagerly been  received by the Global South. In Africa, where the West was dominant in its control over the continent after the liberation movements of the 1960s, they did not invest in the future of Africa, they looted it of its natural resources. China has pursued a different policy. In this century, China has invested in Africa’s infrastructure, especially electricity and railroads. This cannot be denied. U.S. propaganda that China has used so called debt-trap diplomacy to seize African assets or its mineral resources is simply not true

It is crucial that political leaders in the West and thoughtful citizens in the United States and Europe, recognize that the western controlled system known as the rules-based order is declining, and the world is shifting towards development of the Global South. With this transformation taking place today, we should be wise enough to recognize that cooperating with China is in the self-interest of the United States and its citizens. We should define future missions of collaboration with China that will advance civilization, such as; the elimination of poverty in Africa, the colonization of the moon, and the full scale use of nuclear fusion energy. This is what American statesman and leaders should do.

The pillars of progress for all nations are universally identical: satisfying the material needs of the population and nurturing their minds through stimulating economic development, creativity, and agape in society.

All of this is discussed in my hour long podcast above, which I strongly recommend you view. I believe you will benefit.

Read below my earlier posts:

Will China’s Global Governance Initiative Replace The West’s Failed “Rules Based Order?

Rules Based Order in Crisis: Losing Global Domination

Rules Based Order Is Dead, But Trump Didn’t Kill It. Beware of Mark Carney’s Alternative

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

Don’t Believe U.S. Propaganda Maligning China: Global Times Interviews Freeman In Beijing

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The view of Beijing’s Central Business District Photo: VCGEditor’s

Trust what you see in China with your own eyes, not rumors: US political economic analyst

By Peng Xunwen, He Jianing and Xiong Jixin from People’s Daily

Trust what you see in China with your own eyes, not rumors: US political economic analyst

August 17, 2026

Editor’s Note: For years, the US has viewed China as a rival in Africa and sought to cast a shadow over China-Africa cooperation with misleading narratives such as the “China shock.” Against this backdrop, the overseas edition of the People’s Daily (PD) interviewed Lawrence Freeman (Freeman), an American international affairs expert, political economic analyst for Africa, who recently traveled across multiple Chinese cities with his wife. With 30 years of experience on the African continent, Freeman calls for abandoning Cold War thinking and zero-sum competition, stresses the importance of China-US cooperation in advancing global development, and shares his perspective on how the American public should view China.

PD: The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has provided substantial support to Africa’s infrastructure development and economic and social progress. As an expert on African issues, what tangible changes do you believe the BRI has brought to African nations?

Freeman: Africa has long been plagued by a huge infrastructure gap. China has offered tremendous assistance to a great many African countries through the BRI. For decades, I have been deeply involved in work related to the development of Africa. The Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway was constructed by China, and the Port of Djibouti was built with Chinese aid. Without China’s participation, Africa’s development would likely not have advanced so rapidly. China has extended credit support to Africa and built a large number of hospitals, schools, roads, ports, airports, railways and power plants. While Africa’s demand remains huge, China’s contributions are highly commendable.

The BRI enlightens us that mutual benefit and win-win cooperation is the right path forward. More than 370 years ago, the Peace of Westphalia established the principles of equality and sovereignty. In the course of history that followed, sovereign equality has evolved into the most important norm governing state-to-state relations. The prosperity and development of all countries are in the fundamental interests of the US itself. As other countries grow their economies, they will create more economic and trade opportunities for the US. We should break free from outdated, rigid and backward mindsets, discard the logic of win-lose, confrontation and conquest versus subjugation, and embrace a higher vision of development, replacing mutual confrontation with common development. Photo: He Jianing/People's Daily

Lawrence Freeman  Photo: He Jianing/People’s Daily

PD: China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It has also rolled out poverty reduction programs in Africa through cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and other channels. What lessons can Africa draw from China’s poverty reduction model and practices?

Freeman: From what I have learned about China’s development journey, a key driver of its rapid growth is large-scale infrastructure investment. China’s high-speed railway network now exceeds 50,000 kilometers in operation, surpassing the combined total of all other countries in the world. China has built a vast number of new energy power stations, including thermal power, nuclear power and other types.

China has a clear, complete path to poverty alleviation and development: It boasts the world’s largest and fast-growing manufacturing sector; its shipbuilding industry leads the globe, and it is also at the forefront of space exploration. Large-scale infrastructure development, emphasis on scientific and technological R&D and the rapid expansion of manufacturing are core factors behind economic growth and poverty eradication. China’s poverty reduction practices have proven practical and effective. All the African countries I work with are eager to learn from China’s experience and fully master this development model. I believe Africa can fully draw on China’s successful experience.

PD: Today, humanity faces multiple global challenges, including climate change, regional conflicts, poverty and public health crises. In your view, how can international cooperation help tackle these problems?

Freeman: The Western world is currently in the grip of a severe crisis, lacking long-term development visions and blueprints. China has put forward the vision of a community with a shared future for humanity, calling for attention to the common interests of all people, which is of great significance. Mankind needs to establish a new development paradigm centered on development, which is also the direction of my long-term research. The world is never a zero-sum game; the essence of human development is pioneering and progress-driven. 

All countries take the well-being of their people as their fundamental goal. To achieve this, we must first meet people’s basic material needs – housing, employment, electricity, sound infrastructure – so that everyone can live a decent and meaningful life. Only when people have sufficient leisure time can creativity be cultivated. For instance, China produced great philosopher Confucius, and the West had Socrates and Plato. But, weighed down by the pressures of daily life, few people study these classics today, leading to biased perceptions and the conflicts that follow.

Most conflicts in today’s world are rooted in poverty. When people cannot live stable, dignified lives, strife and plunder emerge. If the US, China and all countries work together to build a new development paradigm and steadily raise living standards across the globe, most causes of war will disappear. If the whole world can eliminate absolute poverty as China has done, the lives of all humanity will be fundamentally transformed for the better.

PD: China-US relations are among the most important bilateral relations in the world. This year, the two sides jointly set a new orientation for China-US relations: building a “constructive China-US relationship of strategic stability.” How do you interpret this positioning?

Freeman: The Chinese government has stressed that the “constructive strategic stability” should be a positive stability with cooperation as the mainstay, a sound stability with moderate competition, a constant stability with manageable differences and an enduring stability with promises of peace. Previous US policies toward China, however, were imbued with the dangerous zero-sum game mindset, which I believe lacks careful consideration. The US should take the initiative to identify areas for China-US cooperation. As the world’s two largest economies, China and the US can carry out joint cooperation projects that benefit the people of both countries and all nations around the world.

We met senior citizens singing and dancing in a Shanghai park in morning.

PD: What areas of cooperation between China and the US do you think have the most promising prospects for tangible implementation?

Freeman: The first is research and development of controlled nuclear fusion energy. China is a global leader in nuclear fusion, having achieved stable plasma operation for over 1,000 seconds. The US shelved its nuclear fusion programs decades ago, but nuclear fusion represents the future of energy development, delivering far higher energy output than existing nuclear fission power plants of the same scale. It is still not too late for China and the US to collaborate in this field.

The second is space exploration. The US has spent an extremely long time preparing for its return to the Moon. China has already achieved a soft landing of a probe on the far side of the Moon. Human civilization advances through scientific exploration. Space exploration benefits all of humanity, and the two sides have every reason to cooperate in this area.

The third is joint efforts to eliminate poverty and famine in Africa. If China and the US work together to boost Africa’s development and raise local living standards, the continent will become a global economic and trade hub, benefiting the entire world.

PD: You and your wife have recently visited many cities across China. What are your impressions of the Chinese people and Chinese society?

Freeman: There is one moment that sticks in my mind: I once met a little boy, and I said “Nihao” to him. He immediately replied “Hello.” We chatted freely in English the whole time, and the passersby around us were all delighted. It was such a warm, charming scene – an elderly American chatting effortlessly with a young Chinese boy.

While I was attending conferences, my wife took the subway alone to visit aquariums and museums. Friends back home were all shocked and asked me: Are you sure it’s safe for her to go out by herself? My wife and I felt perfectly safe throughout our stay in China. I think more ordinary Americans should set aside their prejudices and come to China to experience it for themselves. Trust what you see with your own eyes, not rumors.

PD: How has public opinion in the US and China toward each other changed over the years?

Freeman: Today, as China’s comprehensive strength grows steadily, the Chinese people can see the fruits of development with their own eyes and feel progress across all areas firsthand. As a result, more young Chinese people no longer look up to foreign countries as they once did; instead, they view them on an equal footing.

Held back by weaknesses in basic education and a lack of global perspective, American society does not have an objective understanding of China. Many Americans fear China for no reason and always ask me strange questions: “Aren’t you afraid to go to China?” I am puzzled: “What’s there to be afraid of?” This is the misunderstanding and prejudice born out of ignorance about China. In recent years, with China relaxing its visa policies and lowering the threshold for long-term visas, it has become easier for many Americans to visit China, which is a great opportunity to enhance mutual understanding.

Read below my earlier posts:

Freeman Tells Xinhua: Xi-Trump Summit Should Focus on Economic Cooperation

Xinhua Publishes Freeman’s Critique of the Post World War II “Rules Based Order”

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

Why I Was Compelled to Defend the Nation-State of Ethiopia

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I was surprised but not entirely shocked to receive this certificate of appreciation signed by the President of Ethiopia, H.E. Taye Atske Selassie.

I was one of the very few Americans, and the most vociferous, in defending the sovereignty of Ethiopia from the regime change attempt by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), in their war against the nation-state of Ethiopia, from November 2020 to November 2022. I put my personal reputation on the line, and placed myself in opposition to my own government, who made known to me  their disapproval of my actions. Defending Ethiopian sovereignty from an ethnic nationalist militia that was trying to remove the elected government of Ethiopia, was not a difficult decision for me, it was almost instinctive.

I have been involved in analyzing the political economies of African nations for almost four decades and have developed an extremely sensitive “political nose” if you will, to operations to destabilize and overthrow African nations. I knew in days, with certainty, that the TPLF initiated war, was part of a larger political operation, supported by the Western nations including the United States, to weaken and potentially remove, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed from power. I never wavered in my support of the nation-state of Ethiopia during the war, and have remained steadfast today, while others have deserted the defense of Ethiopia.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam-Office of the Prime Minister

What Caused Me to Act?

For me, the actions of a government to develop its economy, by investing in infrastructure, and the expansion of its manufacturing and agricultural sectors are of extreme significance in determining its viability. I decided in 2010, to begin a more serious analysis of Ethiopia and its political economy. This led me to investigate its policies over previous decades and its plans for its future development. I published my analysis of Ethiopia’s commitment to economic growth on my website. My first visit to Ethiopia was in 2014, following three days of meetings in N’Djamena, Chad, where I was appointed the Vice Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Lake Chad Basin Commission. Since then, I have visited Ethiopia many times, often in defiance of the U.S. government, that was ordering Americans to leave Addis Ababa in 2021, offering to purchase tickets for their departure.

I was, and am aware today of the challenges in Ethiopia, especially the dangerous escalation of ethnic nationalism. However, it  is Ethiopia’s overall commitment to progress, that surpasses that of other African nations, which has steered me to defend Ethiopia’s sovereignty. My awareness of Ethiopia’s intent to initiate the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), reinforced my views of Ethiopia’s commitment to the future. I supported the building of the GERD early on because of its importance in bringing electricity to this African nation and its neighbors to power their economies and people. I know very well that Africa’s huge deficit in electricity is killing Africans everyday across the continent. Subsequently, I visited the GERD twice and participated in the book launch of the most complete history of the GERD.* The GERD remains today, the most significant accomplishment in sub-Saharan Africa since the liberation movement freed African nations from British Imperialism. This fantastic water infrastructure project, has the potential to provide African nations with 5,150 megawatts of electrical power, dwarfing any other energy source on the continent.

The author standing in front of five of the thirteen completed waterways that deliver the water to the turbines.

The Ethiopians began planning for this magnificent dam in the 1960s, under the leadership of Emperor Haile Salaisse. Sixty years before the GERD was to begin operations, Ethiopia envisioned capturing the energy of the Blue Nile flowing down from lake Tana. Thus far, it is a singular accomplishment in Africa, by the Ethiopian people. Currently plans exist by Ethiopia to exploit the water rich Blue Nile Basin with the construction of additional water infrastructure projects.

After reading the history of the Ethiopia’s defeat of the Italian army on the battlefield of Adwa, on March 1st, 1896, I recognized the impetus for the bold thinking of the people of Ethiopia, to build this massive dam more than a century later. Ethiopia free from having never experiencing the shackles of colonialism, had higher aspirations for their nation’s future.

The Defeat of the Italian Army on March 1, 1896, prevented the European colonization of Ethiopia-Wikipedia

How DID I Know?

While western governments, international and regional media  predicted that Ethiopia would collapse when the TPLF was marching south towards Addis Ababa; I knew that the Ethiopian people would not allow this to occur. Furthermore, I understood these false predictions  as a form of psychological warfare to defeat the Ethiopian people. I stood virtually alone as a Westerner in my knowledge of the resilience and patriotism of the Ethiopian people. Addis Ababa was not invaded, Ethiopia did not fall, and the TPLF were forced to surrender.  I was right. All my former and current colleagues and friends, and those who claim to know how geopolitical forces operate in Africa, who ridiculed me for my position in defense of Ethiopia, turned out to be dead wrong. How did I know?

I have trained myself to think differently. I’ve trained myself to withstand the force of public opinion, ridicule, and peer group pressure. I am able to reach a conclusion through the reasoning of my mind, founded on my knowledge of the people, the history of a nation, and the geopolitical intent of the West’s rules-based order. My actions are guided by decisions informed by reason, from which I will not waver unless persuaded by superior reasoning. This is what makes me valuable as an analyst and consultant, together with my expertise as a physical economist. Some countries, institutions, and thoughtful individuals recognize and appreciate my unique qualities, and thus are willing to collaborate with me.  Others who are less thoughtful, do not.

*How this Happened: Demystifying The Nile, History and Events Leading to the Realization of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, by Dereje Befekadu Tessema

Read below my earlier posts on this topic:

Completed Ethiopia Dam-GERD Can Power East African Nations

New Book on Ethiopia’s GERD: Historical Battle of the Nile-Colonialism vs Development

Freeman Speaks On The GERD: An Engineering Marvel-A Necessity For The Nile River Basin

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica

Xinhua Publishes Freeman’s Critique of the Post World War II “Rules Based Order”

Lawrence , , , , , , ,

July 22, 2026

Below is my article published by Xinhua news service on July 21, 2026

Column: Those who conjure up so-called “China Squeeze” ignore historical reality

Source: Xinhua-2026-07-21

   

A train stops at the Nagad railway station along the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway in Djibouti, Sept. 19, 2022. The Chinese-built 752.7-km-long Ethiopia-Djibouti standard gauge railway, also known as the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, is the first fully electrified trans-boundary railway on the African continent. (Xinhua/Dong Jianghui)

by Lawrence Freeman

A recent article published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) conveniently ignores the historical burden imposed on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) under the United States-led “rules-based order” following World War II.

The paper is riddled with historical distortions in a deliberate attempt to prove the authors’ presumption: China’s exports are responsible for crowding out space for the LMICs to develop their local manufacturing capacity. As a specialist in the political economy of sub-Saharan African nations and China-Africa relations, I can provide some light on this misleading narrative. While it is true that Africa-China trade reached a historically high level of 348 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, with African countries running a trade deficit of 102 billion dollars, the more important question is: how did this imbalance emerge?

Here the historical weakness of the paper under review is revealed. The opening sentence begins with a falsehood: “In the United States, President Donald J. Trump’s tariffs have drawn political force from the view that China’s surplus hollowed out American manufacturing.”

This is completely untrue. The U.S. willfully destroyed its own manufacturing sector beginning in the 1980s, when it adopted the policy of becoming a post-industrial society. The U.S. establishment decided at that time it would move away from being a manufacturing-based industrial society in favor of becoming the center of the financial world, with an expanding service sector, except for the production of armaments.

This was advertised in the Council on Foreign Relations magazine, Foreign Affairs, and implemented by then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. At that time, China had no strong manufacturing capability. It neither possessed the ability to challenge the United States nor contributed to the shrinkage of America’s once powerful manufacturing sector.

Let us keep in mind the reality of the world economy: in the 1960s, the United States functioned as the world hegemon, leading the “rules-based order,” with a GDP around 10 times that of China’s. This only started to change in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the reform and opening-up drive led by Deng Xiaoping, which kicked off in China over the next forty years the greatest economic miracle that our planet has seen.

Again, taking Africa as an example, the United States and the West were in total control of the so-called free markets. The United States and the West had total control over the nations of Africa both politically and economically, as they did over much of the developing sector. China did not emerge as a major player in African economies until the 2000s. During the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, the United States and the West ruled the financial institutions, including the IMF and World Bank, and they did nothing to build up the manufacturing capability of Africa. This is the truth, and this is egregiously absent from the PIIE report.

During that time there was no leader, except President John F. Kennedy, who was concerned to develop manufacturing capabilities in less-developed countries, especially Africa. What was done by the West, by the U.S., by the “rules-based order” was to extract wealth from African nations. Looting their natural resources, not development. This cannot be blamed on China.

Workers arrange clothes at a textile factory in Maseru, the capital of Lesotho, on July 30, 2025. Lesotho is a small southern African country and one of the world’s least developed countries. Its economy is heavily dependent on textile exports. It exports over 50 percent of its garment products to the United States. (Xinhua/Wang Guansen)

Western policy never genuinely aimed to integrate Africa into the global manufacturing supply chain. Consequently, African economies today account for only about 3 percent of globally traded manufactured goods. This outcome is not a result of China crowding out lower-income countries’ industrial space. Rather, it is an uncomfortable reality that the PIIE and its ideologues are unwilling to confront, as acknowledging it would undermine their anti-China narrative, which is precisely why this factor is conspicuously absent from their report.

Africans suffer, actually die, from the lack of electricity, due to the willful decision not to invest in infrastructure by the West. This is what has prevented African nations from developing manufacturing capabilities. The lack of railroads is another element that is holding back the economic growth of African economies. Not China.

The failure to invest in the most critical component of an economy: infrastructure. This is the cause of the economic deficiency of African nations. Without infrastructure, you will not have a manufacturing sector. You will not have an industrialized economy. It is not the result of China squeezing Africa out of the market. The problems we have today in the LMICs, especially in Africa, are a result of willful decisions by the West not to develop these nations. This cannot be covered up by using mathematical formulas or refusing to report on what actually happened to the developing sector during the decades from 1960 through 2000, before China’s economy began to be a serious actor in the world economy.

“When the United States was the world’s economic hegemon after World War II, it created manufacturing and export space for others — first Japan, then the Asian Tigers, and eventually China itself,” claimed the authors in the conclusion part. However, there was never any intention by Western financial institutions to develop manufacturing capacities for low-and middle-income countries, and little to no investment in vital categories of infrastructure, which are necessary to build a robust manufacturing sector.

courtesy of pamirllc.com

The most irreconcilable historical reality that the authors failed to address in the narrative accusing China of preventing the development of the LMICs is this: From the 1940s until the year 2000, when China began to emerge as a successful economic power, the Western political-financial oligarchy had dominant control over the world economy. They, not China, failed to promote economic development in the LMICs for six decades.

China, to its credit, has advanced infrastructure development across our planet through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is unarguably the case that in Africa, without the BRI, the conditions of life for the majority of Africans would be much, much worse. To this day, no American president has joined or agreed to participate in the BRI, the largest global infrastructure program the world has ever undertaken.

Editor’s note: Lawrence Freeman is a U.S. political-economic analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for over three decades. He is also a geopolitical analyst of U.S.-China relations.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Xinhua News Agency.■

Read below my earlier posts:

Will China’s Global Governance Initiative Replace The West’s Failed “Rules Based Order?”

Rules Based Order in Crisis: Losing Global Domination

Rules Based Order Is Dead, But Trump Didn’t Kill It. Beware of Mark Carney’s Alternative

Lawrence Freeman is a Political-Economic Analyst for Africa, who has been involved in economic development policies for Africa for 35 years. He is a teacher, writer, public speaker, consultant on Africa, and an analyst of global strategic relations. Mr. Freeman strongly believes that economic development is an essential human right. He is the creator of the blog: lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com, also publishes on: lawrencefreeman.substack.com, “Freeman’s Africa and the World, and on X @lkfreemansafrica